


Monachopsis

by Kangoo



Series: Monachopsis [1]
Category: Warcraft - All Media Types, World of Warcraft
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Animal Death, Blood and Violence (implied), Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, Friendship, Hurt/Comfort, Illidan Has Issues, Illidan's imprisonment wasn't fun yo, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Insomniac Illidan, Kael'thas Has Friends, M/M, Magical Theory, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Sensory Deprivation, The author is a nerd
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-17
Updated: 2018-01-10
Packaged: 2019-02-03 14:54:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 21,448
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12750555
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kangoo/pseuds/Kangoo
Summary: /monachopsis/nounthe subtle but persistent feeling of being out of place





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Monachopsis](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14548053) by [Feloriel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Feloriel/pseuds/Feloriel)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Because every pairing needs at least one soulmate AU and sometimes you gotta be the fanfiction you want to see in the world
> 
> I could go very hard on this story and dig really deep into Illidan's and Kael's psyche but i'm t i r e d so you'll have to get by with whatever I manage to spit out, sorry
> 
> Also I sure do write a lot of boring character stuff

Every sentient being on Azeroth — mortal or immortal, no matter the race — has a soulmate; a handful of words written in magic and blood on their skin when both them and the other half of their soul come of age. For night elves, it usually happens around their one hundred and tenth birthday: some earlier, some later, nothing unusual for a society older than the rocks on which it built its cities.

  


But when Malfurion comes of age, letters bloom on his wrist in black ink and elegant loops, and Illidan’s skin stays bare.

  


Some will later say: this is the root of evil.

  


(They will be wrong.)

  


-

  


Malfurion's wrist says ' _good morning boys_ ' and Tyrande's says ' _it's too early to be good yet_ ', because Malfurion is still half asleep and takes a moment to understand what her words really mean. But then he does and the morning dissolves into cheerful chattering and careful touches to each other's mark, which turned into a lovely silver hue once the words had been told.

  


(Illidan smiles wide and wonders how long Tyrande has been addressing both and only talking to Malfurion. The words, after all, are only the first s you say  _to_ your soulmate, not the first s they hear.)

  


Illidan knows that nothing will ever be the same, after that. At the time, it doesn’t feel like such a bad thing. He marvels at their luck; he laughs and congratulates them, and he’s _happy_ for them. Truly, he is: a soulmate is a wonderful thing to have, and he can’t think of anyone more deserving of his brother’s soul than Tyrande.

  


They’re his two best friends in the whole world. He just wants to see them smile.

  


And for a few years, it stays this way; Illidan has two golden eyes ( _a great destiny_ , their parents call it; he doesn’t understand what it means yet) and Malfurion a few silver words, and all is fine in the world. Little changes — Tyrande, after all, has always been like a sister to him, and it's not hardship to always have her at their side, although she understandably cares much more about his brother than him. He’s the other half of her _soul_ , after all. Their parents think their children blessed, one with a soulmate born so close to him and the other with glory in his eyes. They do not know yet that it is a curse, to have the hand of fate closed so tightly around the life of their children.

  


(They will not live long enough to know this.)

  


Illidan’s infatuation with Tyrande — because it is hard not to love her, beautiful and fierce as she is — stays quiet, a distant thought and a flutter in his chest. He never entertains the thought that she could prefer him to his brother: they are tied together by fate and this is not something Illidan will ever dare to go against. Instead he lets the feelings turns to admiration and respect, and when her smile toward him is brightened by her love for Malfurion he can smile back with genuine joy at the happiness they share. _This is enough_ , he thinks, and starts calling her _sister._

  


Bitterness, still, comes. Illidan is destined for something great, he sees it in the mirror every morning when the golden light of the setting sun echoes in the hue of his eyes — why, then, does it feel like he’s standing still while his best friends are running ahead? The three of them are young and stupid, so caught up in their own things they forgot the rest of the world. Except Malfurion and Tyrande are each other’s world now, and Illidan’s the only one left behind.

  


And how dare they, he thinks, go forward without him? How dare they make time for each other and forget about him?

  


He feels trapped, in a way — like whatever he does, he can’t follow them. Suramar is smothering him but he can’t leave, not when the two better parts of his own soul are still there. But there’s nothing for him here: no path to follow, unless he wishes to merely imitate his brother and becomes Cenarius’s student, no opportunity to rise above his station as he feels he is supposed to—

  


No soulmate, only another thing his brother has and he doesn’t. Fate, it seems, has taken the place of many things in his life.

  


A decade later and his wrist is still bare: an oddity, despite what he was told. In a way it’s a relief, to know his soul is no one else’s but his, that he is free to do what he wants, with no one to keep him back and no weakness to be used against him. But it’s a bitter kind of relief, tainted with the knowledge that he is alone in the most visceral manner there is.

  


He takes to wearing a silver band similar to what unbounded elves wear, to hide a mark that isn’t there. Malfurion would ask about it, but he isn’t there either, and so Illidan gets away with the deception and it hurts far more than being called out on his lie ever could. Once, it partially melts on his skin because of an unfortunate fire spell; he stops wearing it after that.

  


He longs for change, wishes he could pack his things and leave the city, the kingdom, the continent — travel to faraway lands and meet dragons, chase his fate rather than wait for it to find him. Now more than ever the idea of a destiny is what keeps him awake, keeps him going forward.

  


( Sometimes it feels like it’s all he has left. )

  


Restless, motionless, Illidan throws himself into the study of he magical arts; the only thing Suramar has left to offer, when even his two closest friends are getting further away from him. They’re busy, they don’t have the time — he stops asking when it becomes harder to hear the excuses they come up with than it is to be without them.

  


And if he forgets to eat or sleep or take a break, well. It’s not like there’s anyone to complain about it.

  


–

  


Here’s something they never tell you about immortality: no one can stay sane after thousand of years of the same thing repeating itself.

  


Kel’dorei civilization was built on foundations of madness and starvation, because when everything loses its meaning — when days are gray and chaos becomes predictable through sheer routine — the pointlessness of life becomes a physical _ache_ , a hunger-like void between their ribs. And when people look for a way to fill the void, they find power; they find magic and conquest and nonsensical concepts, and they collect them like precious gems and think, _maybe, with one more thing, I’ll be whole_.

  


Soulmates were supposed to deal with the issue. It is said the goddess herself gifted each living thing a mirror image of itself, to complete them and fill up the hole next to their heart. It says much about the night elves that this was never enough for them.

  


They are insatiable: eternity will do this to a person.

  


  


Here’s something they never tell you about the Legion: it doesn’t prey on weak minds. It looks for the abandoned, the lonely, the _hungry_ , those emptied by their own ambitions and the slow, all-consuming passage of time. It breaks them and then build them back up again, with fire and blood poured in the cracks.

  


Illidan never had a chance. None of them did.

  


And maybe Malfurion and Tyrande really were better people than him, for being content with each other. Maybe he could have been like that, too, if he hadn’t been alone — if he had a reason to keep going forward, a soulmate or a benevolent teacher, if he had been able to choose for himself rather than letting the idea of fate doing it for him, if he had fought half as hard as any other elf to fill the ever-expending hollowness in his chest.

  


(And in time, he will, but not yet. The void feels smaller when he is full of self-righteous rage and betrayal, and for a while he is content to fill it with this. It festers like a wound, but the pain is a welcome distraction.)

  


That’s what the Legion offers most of all: guidance and meaning for the lost. _How tragic_ , the tales will say, unable to understand even a fraction of what he’s done for the world, _that such a bright soul would turn to such dark forces._

  


_How tragic indeed_ , Illidan thinks as the door to his cell slams shut and he’s left in darkness.

  


Illidan Stormrage: soulless, betrayer, tragic hero. The list is getting long.

  


  


Here’s something they never tell you about night elves: they wear insanity better than most. It settles in their bones like too much sleep, heavy and warm, and they learn to live with it so quickly you forget they ever were any other way.

  


Here’s something Illidan tries to forget: he isn’t a night elf, not anymore, not _only_.

  


But here, alone in the darkness, Illidan wonders— who _is_ he? Since birth, his life has been ruled by others’ expectations of him and, in his effort to meet them, he might have lost himself. Illidan feels like he exists only when he is seen: adrift in the darkness, the stories they tell of him are the last thing keeping him alive in history.

  


(Someday everyone will forget who he is, and that day he will be truly dead.)

  


And in those stories, Illidan knows he is a demon. They have told him as much, the last words he’s heard from his own family: he is the betrayer of his people, a sympathizer of the Legion, a monster. In his mind he knows himself innocent, but truth loses all meaning in this cell, until all he remembers is that he’s evil, trapped here because he’d rather see the world _burn._

  


In time he finds the idea more and more alluring. He imagines Malfurion’s rattling breath, blood dripping down his face, Tyrande’s slack hands under the moonlight she cherished so. Sometimes he sees them in front of him, as real as if they were really here, but when he closes his hands around their throats neither of them are truly there and he is left grasping only stale air and shadows. He closes his blind eyes to the all too familiar walls of his cell — so clearly visible despite the darkness weighing on his chest until he can’t breath anymore — and he sees Suramar burning. _Soon_ , he thinks, smiling, and forgets how long he has been thinking the same word, watching the world burns behind his eyelids.

  


_This_ _is my destiny_ , he thinks, and for a moment his cell is alight with embers floating in the air.

  


(Even without the golden eyes he was praised for, the promise of a future greater than him, he wants to believe he is alive for  some kind of reason . The idea of destiny has driven him forward for so long, he forgot to live for anything but the promise of what is yet to come — Illidan has always been, at the heart of things, uprooted from time. )

  


  


Slowly, he learns to be at home in the darkness, in the maddening silence, in the gaping void that isolation opens under his ribs.

  


Here’s something history will try to forget: Illidan isn’t evil. He’s lonely, misguided and so, so _young_ , but evil is something greater than him, beyond the petty revenge of a bitter elf.

  


Here’s something history never realized: Illidan has never been sane.

  


(Maybe, if he keeps repeating it to himself, he’ll start to believe it, and sanity will feel less like one of those things he lost along the way _._ )

  


–

  


Time passes, as it usually does, and Illidan drowns himself in its flow. Changeless days and nights blur together; he counts the hours until he forgets what the number means, and then keeps counting pointless numbers, scratching lines in the walls of his prison with his too-sharp nails. They disappear, sometimes, as the spells weaved under the rock stop him from digging his way free. He keeps trying.

  


He claws the days in his flesh until his own blood makes the ground wet under him, and this too disappear. He wonders, briefly, if he could lose enough blood to slip away before the spell could repair the damage, but when he slits his throat it mends itself before his fingers have even left his skin.

  


He hasn’t lost time; time has lost him, forgotten him in his dark prison and went on without him.

  


And then he sleeps. There’s not point to staring at the same walls for hours on end and Illidan feels numb and confused, like when he stayed awake for too long reading about complex magical theories. It’s the very tangible feeling of time passing, and it hurts so much — eyes like sandpaper and heart aching in his empty chest —

  


His sleep is restless and full of nightmares. When he wakes up, it’s with a gasp or a scream, covered in a cold sweat and as exhausted as he was when he closed his eyes. He can’t say for how long he’s slept and so, he closes them again, and an inordinate amount of time passes like that, days slept away in the hope that, in unconsciousness, he’ll find some form of solace, escape from his own reality. His dreams are cruel but at least there’s _something_ happening in them, as painful it might be.

  


Sometimes he dreams of blood and it isn’t his own. Those are good dreams.

  


And then, at some point — months or years since he’s been locked here, he can’t hope to say — he opens his eyes, not even remembering when he had closed them, and something has changed.

  


That hasn’t happened before. Nothing ever changes, here: immortality takes a whole new meaning in the darkness, Illidan and his cell both suspended out of time, every instant freezing into the next in an endless loop.

  


But on this day — and, inside his shaking mind, the concept of _day_ finds his way back to reality again — he _knows_ something is different, and he looks down to a body that could be a hundred or a thousand years old and his eyes finds _letters_ , even darker than the shadows around him, a sharp contrast against the burn scar here.

  


From the pit of his memory, the knowledge of the foreign-familiar-forgotten symbols drags itself to the forefront of his mind and he reads the words with more clarity than he has done anything in ages.

  


_I only wish we could have met in better circumstances._

  


_(_ _Meaning_ is something Illidan has had troubles finding for his entire life and there, in this breathless moment when he lays eyes on his mark for the first time, he thinks: _this is it_.

  


_This is what I’ve been looking for all this time._ )

  


Long sentences aren't unheard of, but they're rarer than simple, boring 'hello's and 'good to meet you's, and Illidan wonders what kind of strange events would ever lead to such words being spoken to him.  What things are waiting in his future, that such bittersweet would be spoken by his soulmate?

  


But soulwords — they're always spoken. They're a window into the future, almost self-fulfilling prophecies, and his own don't create doubt into his mind, they create _hope._ Hope that, someday, somehow, he'll get out, and he'll do what he was always supposed to do: he's going to _save the world_.

  


A nd, more than anything, he’ll find a way to help his soulmate. Whoever they are, he’ll save them too.

  


  


He traces the words with careful fingers until he can tastes them on his tongue and feels them burning the tips of his fingers. His voice, unused for decades, croaks out each syllable like a prayer, and then again and again until his voice cracks with overuse. He holds the name against his chest, tender skin pressed against the beat of his heart, and thinks, _I’m not alone._

  


_Not anymore_.

  


He starts counting days again; this time, he doesn’t loose them. There is a name waiting for him outside of his cell and it gives him the strength to push forward, to tear through the fog of all-consuming madness and finds his way back to himself again.

  


His soulmate is waiting for him and he won’t make them wait any longer.

  


Illidan walks around the boundaries of his cell, adds the number of steps necessary to cross it to the number of days since he’s been _awake_ , pocks and prods the spells and sigils and digs his claws into their weak spot, tugging at them until they loosen. He works restlessly, tirelessly, for once grateful that he doesn’t need food or sleep in this cursed prison; now the isolation is a boon, the wardens unaware of his new-found motivation to get out.

  


They think themselves trained to keep him chained. They are wrong.

  


(They’re _all_ wrong, and he’ll show them— for this name on his wrist, he must.)

  


–

  


Illidan Stormrage, the Betrayer, sets himself free before Tyrande thinks to; he leaves a string of wounded but live wardens in his path, spared not by mercy but a lack of time that spurs him forward, their blood still fresh on his hands.

  


(He has never been good at waiting for things he doesn’t expect to come.)

  


Everything feels new. The air, the sky, the forest sprawling around him; all familiar yet distinctly different.

  


Illidan breathes it in and he doesn’t smile, but it’s a close thing. He’s missed this — the light, and seeing with his own eyes that things always change, whether or not he’s there to observe it. Even himself, he thinks, tracing the mark with his fingertips. It’s perfectly smooth, more like a birthmark than a tattoo, but he likes to think it feels different than the rest of his skin. Cooler, perhaps, than the scar underneath it that’s always felt warmer than the rest of his body.

  


Still, despite the changes, Illidan recognizes his surroundings as Mount Hyjal. He’s a night elf, for Elune’s sake: no amount of time could blur his memory so much that he wouldn’t recognize the sacred mountain. The trees are old — not as old as he is, but he suspects few things are — and they _sing_ around him, the whispers of countless living things and the steady beat of their hearts filling his ears.

  


He’s been alone for a very long time, too long to remember what voices sound like, maybe, but this? This is not familiar — it’s deeper than that, carved into his bones, into his blood, his _soul._ Despite everything, Illidan is a kaldorei, and his place will always be among those ancient trees.

  


Well, until he gets bored, that is. It happened before and it will again, he knows it very well. But here, after countless years banished to the darkness, the sounds of the forest fill his heart and almost drowns out the hum of his soulmark, the rattling of his restless bones.

  


It’s not peace, but it’s a pleasant approximation of it.

  


–

  


Illidan waits until the last rays of the sun disappear behind the trees and then, he walks.

  


The cover of the night means nothing against another night elf — they were born to live under the moonlight and there is very little in that world able to conceal itself from their nocturnal eyesight. It’s a comfort nonetheless; Illidan is too much a kaldorei (too proud, too selfish, magic weaved in the fine web of his blood vessels) to enjoy long exposure to daylight, especially after so much time spent in complete darkness. Even what little light filters through the foliage hurts his eyes.

  


Also, he missed the moon.

  


(He remembers Tyrande, calling for Elune’s guidance and protection in difficult times, the cool touch of her magic against his wounds. He hates her and misses her like a gap at his side and in his chest, like an ache or a bruise, a widening of the ever-present void. Malfurion, too, hurts in his absence; and he can’t stop himself from pressing the mental wound, wincing and all the happier for it. Somewhere in him there is the strength to love them still; it’s a comfort and a pain both, to know the only thing keeping him from home is that home doesn’t want him to come back.)

  


So the night will not help him lose track of the wardens who are doubtlessly hunting him; it doesn't matter. Let them come: even the predators prowling in the shadows know he is the most dangerous thing in these woods.

  


For now, Illidan feels safe enough (the wardens won't be coming out for him yet, not in the state he left most of them, unless of course they are more obsessed than he expected) to head out deeper into the woods. Already he's settling back into habits he's had since early childhood— the kind of memories an eternity wouldn't be enough to erase. His parents' lessons on how to disappear in the shadows of the undergrowth come back to mind but muscle memory alone makes his steps lighter, silent as a nightsaber's.

  


So he chooses a direction at random and starts walking. Or is random really the word? The mark on his wrist, like a compass, shows him the way; glowing a faint, golden shine to his borrowed eyes. He follows it and the low burn eases into the warmth of sunlight on his skin, soothing the itch under his skin that he attributes to anticipation. Illidan has never been a patient man, after all.

  


(He doesn't leave any sign of his passage to track him by, not even the slightest footprint — only the heavy silence left in the wake of great and terrible things passing through, which he doesn't even notice.)

  


–

  


It soon becomes obvious that the Legion isn’t as gone from this world as Illidan expected it to be. A large part of what he recognize as Ashenvale has been corrupted by its magic; the ground is dry and lifeless under his feet, more dust than earth, and the trees smell of putrefaction and sulfur. There’s a weight at the edge of his mind and the back of his neck, like unseen eyes watching him. He suddenly feels very naked, without armor or a weapon to defend himself.

  


Magic won’t be enough to ward off the creatures haunting these woods if they attack him.

  


But they don’t, and Illidan steps out of the blighted woods without having seen or heard the things he knows were watching him pass. He only feels all the more worried about it. Rabid animals attack blindly: if they took the time to _think_ , then they are far more dangerous than a few corrupted nightsabers.

  


Illidan isn’t sure how long he was walking. There’s a growling emptiness in his stomach, and the feeling became so foreign to him that it takes a moment to realize it’s hunger and not only the loneliness eating away at his sanity once again. His throat is dry, too: that’s one of the few things he didn’t miss during his imprisonment, but at least it tells him _some_ amount of time passed.

  


Time is still a rather distant concept to him and because little light ever reach the deepest parts of Ashenvale, he couldn’t match the passage of time with the movements of the moon in the sky. As he reaches the outskirt of the woods he catches glimpses of the night sky above, but nothing indicates if it is still the same night as when he set out.

 

Not like it really matters. He’s done well enough without the concept of time for however long he spent in his cell, and there are more pressing matters at hand. Like how hungry he really is, and the paved road he finds under his feet.

  


If this is really Ashenvale — and he’s mostly positive it is — then this road will lead him back toward civilization. Here's to hoping he won't get shot on sight.

  


–

  


The good news is: when he reach an inhabited building, he is immediately welcomed inside by fretting elves-like figures who push food and water into his hands as soon as he steps foot into the hollowed-out tree. They remind him of Cenarius, only— smaller, and female. The laughing sisters, they call themselves. They seem to have mistaken him from a druid. He doesn't know why, and doesn't try to tell them the truth. It would only brings him trouble.

  


The bad news is: he has been imprisoned for far longer than he had expected.

  


His voice is faint with shock when he rasps out, voice gravely with disuse, “Ten— _thousand_ years? I didn't— I didn't know it had been this long.”

  


That would explain the number of ruins he found on his way, though.

  


One of them, Trysselia or something the like, pats him gently on the head and nudges the bowl of soup closer to him. “The others said that as well. Guess it must be confusing to wake up after such a long sleep— _I_ get confused after sleeping for twelve hours, so ten thousand years—!”

  


Illidan looks into his plate. The aroma is almost too much for his deprived sense and he doesn't feel really hungry anymore. He still chokes down the warm liquid, not eager to pass out from undernourishment later on.

  


“Time passes differently there,” He says. It's not a lie, not really; he just omits to say that by 'there' he doesn't mean the Emerald Dream — doesn't mention the darkness, and the way time doesn't quite passes differently as much as it doesn't pass at all.

  


“I guess so.” Trysselia smiles gently. “I know you've had one hell of a nap, but you must have walked all night. Let's get you to bed and you can think about it tomorrow, alright?”

  


He lets her bully him into a makeshift cot, likely put there for the _others_ she mentioned — freshly awaken druids, just as lost as he is. It wouldn't do to still be there if another came by.

  


_Ten thousand years—_

  


Illidan sneaks out as soon as he's able and refuses to think about it.

  


–

  


He doesn't go far, only stumbles into the high grass outside the Raynewood tree and falls to his knees there, shoulders sagging under the weight of the years he missed. Millenniums, swallowed by the darkness.

  


Suddenly, Illidan feels faint. He looks up toward the sky. Here the trees are further from each others and he can see the stars clearly; they aren't those he remembers.

  


_Ten_ thousand _years_ , he thinks numbly. Even to an immortal, the sheer length of time  lost  seems impossible. The very idea would drive him mad if living this eternity in  _complete darkness_ hadn't already done the job.

  


Illidan doesn't know how much time he spends there, starring at unknown constellations (although he didn't know them before  either — never saw the point) and  thinking nothing at all. At some point he hears steps, like hooves muffled by the grass, and the great figure of Ordanus folds into a sitting position next to him. He doesn't turn his head. What little he knows of him from the laughing sisters' constant chattering tells him this is not someone who would be overjoyed of his improbable survival.

  


“You are not a druid,” The keeper of the grove states.

  


“No.”

  


There is silence, then, “Ten thousand years is a long time spent away from home, is it not?”

  


Illidan absentmindedly traces the mark on his wrist and doesn't say anything. Cenarius never had many good things to say either to or about him; he's surprised his son reacts so calmly to his presence. Maybe Ordanus doesn't know about him.

  


“I'm afraid I can't help you.”

  


“Can't, or won't?”

  


“Both,” Ordanus replies easily. “But I can show you the way toward people who might. West from there, following the road— you'll find a town. Its archives go back thousand of years and what history you won't find in them can be told to you by the people living there. Learn of what you have missed; much has changed since you were gone.”

  


“Yeah, I got that impression too,” Illidan says and gestures toward the sky, which he didn’t even think could change. “And yet much is still the same, too.”

  


Ordanus glances back, in the general direction of the corrupted part of the forest, and nods once. Then he stands and offers his hand to help Illidan up. Illidan ignores it and very carefully doesn’t groan when pain shoots through his muscles, overused for the first time in millenniums.

  


“It's a few days' walk to Astranaar — you best ask the sisters for supplies.”

  


Illidan shrugs, rolls his shoulders, then settles on a nod.

  


Ordanus calls back to him as he's walking back to the Raynewood Retreat. “Illidan,” He says, and Illidan freezes at the sound of his own name. “You came here in peace and I will let you go as such, but know this: these trees have lived through one Sundering already. Neither they nor you will survive another one.”

  


It doesn't sound like a threat — more like a simple statement of how things are. Again, he doesn't reply and keeps walking.

  


–

  


The sisters are sorry to see him go — he is, apparently, an interesting novelty. They tell him as much as they pack a bag of supplies for him, waving away his half-whispered complaints. Already his throat hurts from what little talking he’s done.

  


“I thank you for your hospitality,” He tells them, and pretends he's not running away, back to the familiar-comforting-terrifying silence of the wilderness.

  


  


And so, because there is nothing else to be done, Illidan walks.

  


Every night elf has stepped on Mount Hyjal at least once but Suramar is far from here and Illidan knows little of the region beyond the basics, so he keeps to the road. Someone with a better grasp on druidic magic would probably have no problem navigating the twisting labyrinth of growing vegetation but, well. Druidism doesn't agree with Illidan.

  


(His blood sings and tells him it should, but there is an odd sense of comfort in knowing that, for once, he isn't doing what fate had planned for him. And maybe that's because he's too prideful to find his place where Malfurion has already settled, but he'll take it.)

  


Maybe, had he ever learned patience and meditation, Illidan would find his way back to serenity as well; but he knows nothing of either of those concepts, and he spends the two days' trip toward Astranaar with his thoughts turned inward, toward his own chaotic mind. Most of the first night is drowned under a constant stream of 'no's and 'impossible's; he needs at least that much to get used to a whole era gone for what amount to him as the blink of an eye — the longest, most painful blink of his incredibly long life.

  


He takes a break at sunrise to hide from the sunlight. He sits in a patch of shadows and watches the sunrise with narrowed eyes until the light becomes too strong to his unusually sensible eyes, and then he closes them and settles for a lot of waiting.

  


Apparently, ten thousand years (he feels like each time he thinks about it it gets more improbable) gave him at least one new habit: when he has nothing to do, his body just decides he should sleep to pass the time, and he's unconscious moments after.

  


  


Illidan wakes up with a gasp as a raindrop hits his cheek and claws his way back to full consciousness in a matter of breathless, panic-fueled seconds. Sleeping, it seems, feels a little like death and a lot like an eternity in darkness, and the blurry-sleepy feeling of being back _there_ sent his heart racing before he was fully aware of what was happening.

  


He must have spent _centuries_ sleeping his banishment away; who knows how much time he would have lost, had he been left to sleep undisturbed?

  


Panting with adrenaline, Illidan looks around himself and whips his cheek absentmindedly. Another drop falls on the other side of his face, then another, and he looks up; the sky, when he catches sight of it between the leaves, is covered in dark gray clouds. He's not sure how hungry he'd feel if he had slept two hours, or if he had slept two dozens: _hunger,_ as it is, feels kind of new to him, and he'll need more time to get used to how it's supposed to feel again.

  


But there's no ache to indicate he’s starving _,_ so it can't have been that much time, right?

  


(Oh, that's _truly_ new: fear of something as vague as lost time. Illidan could fend off a hundred demons, but he doesn't know how to fight the very concept of _time_. How are you supposed to vanquish a fear when you can't even fight its source?)

  


It doesn't matter, anyway. There is no more sunlight to bother him, so Illidan takes his bag and sets off, mindless of the rain pouring down on him. His supplies will be safe inside his pack and the itch is back. What sets it off he doesn't know — fear, maybe, or memories, or something else altogether — but it's making him restless and maybe he can walk it off, like he can walk off the heaviness of sleep and the creeping shadows at the edge of his vision.

  


_Just keep going_ , he tells himself.  _Just a little longer._

  


–

  


Maybe, Illidan thinks as slumps in the grass, in front of a sign that reads _Astranaar_ , doing so much after so much time doing nothing at all wasn’t such a good idea. He thought the stasis he was kept in would preserve his muscle mass as well but oh boy was he _wrong_.

  


The fact that he hasn’t slept since he got out — not counting his impromptu nap, which was only restful until he had a panic attack about it — can’t have helped with the matter. The sky above the road is clearer than the rest of the forest and, as such, he knows exactly how much time he’s spent walking, barely ever taking a break in fear of losing his momentum, which was the only thing keeping him going at that point.

  


He doesn’t even have that anymore: right now, it feels like standing up might kill him which, as disappointing as such a death would be after surviving everything else, would be _fucking relaxing_.

  


“Hey, are you alright?”

  


Illidan waves a hand in the general direction of the voice and groans. Everything hurts and if his arm wasn’t thrown over his eyes he’d doubt of the existence of his body as a thing beyond the concept of absurd, inexplicable suffering.

  


“Can you stand?”

  


Because the Voice is not to be deterred by sheer force of will — and Illidan misses the time when his age-old strategy of ignoring things until they stopped existing in his vicinity _worked_ _—_ _,_ Illidan uses what little strength he has left to mutter something that could, with some imagination, be understood as ‘ _m fine, please let me die in peace_. It mostly comes out as unintelligible mumbling, though.

  


“Alright, I see how it is. Come on, up you get.”

  


Hands slip under his arms and somehow manage to lift him to his feet despite the fact that he's basically a dead weight right now. He opens his eyes a crack and sees a small (ish, considering their standard is at 7 foot high) kaldorei woman. She quirks one eyebrow in poorly-hidden amusement.

  


“He lives! Wonderful. Can you walk?”

  


Illidan, who has found his ability to form coherent sentences again, sighs and makes absolutely no effort to make her life easier. “Could I ever?”

  


“You must have gotten her somehow.”

  


“Well I can't anymore. I'm dead. Dead men don't walk.”

  


“Hell, the dead have been doing an awful lot of things they're not supposed to be doing lately,” The woman says and throws his arm over her shoulders. She's smaller than he is because Illidan, as he has been told many times before, is freakishly tall, but she bears his weight easily. “But I think you're a bit too articulate to be dead yet, buddy. I'm afraid the only thing you are is over-dramatic.”

  


“I'm a night elf, it's not over-dramatic if it's our entire culture.”

  


She snorts and doesn’t try deny it. There's a pause as she does her best to balance his bigger body in a way that will let her move him around and he does nothing to help.

  


Then, “Wait, what was that about the dead?” He tries to stand and lasts about a second before stumbling forward and would have fallen on his face if the unknown woman hadn't been here to support him.

  


“If I had known _that_ would give you back your energy,” She says wonderingly.

  


“I leave you alone _a few millenniums_ and you go bringing back the dead, what the hell,” Illidan mutters to himself. At her confused, ' _what_?', he says, “Woman, I have no idea what year it is, so you'll need to be a little more precise about the whole— dead doing things business.”

  


Ten thousand years ago, necromancy was something of a dying art, so to speak. It was pretty badly seen by highborne authorities — for understandable reasons — and although no real effort had been made to stop people from practicing it, well. It sure as hell hadn't been _encouraged_ , either.

  


“Oh, buddy,” She says, freeing one of her arm to pat him on the head, “This is a _long_ story, and not one I'm going to tell you standing up in the cold. Let's get you inside, hm?”

  


Well, Illidan isn’t going anywhere fast by himself, anyway — it’s not like he has much of a choice.

  


–

  


The elf, he learns, is named Ylldraeth Shadesinger. She tells him that over a cup of burning tea, as she’s cooking them dinner and he’s staring into space, trying to rouse his mind from the blank stupor it slipped into as Illidan walked. It’s a comfortable state of being, but not one very prone to understanding matters such as the geopolitical state of Azeroth in the last ten thousand years (or, at least, the last decade).

  


She’s an odd one, Ylldraeth. Surprisingly kind, but odd still: how many people, he wonders, would see a strange, confused man on the side of the road and decide to bring him to their home? And she keeps talking, too — she doesn’t seem to care that he doesn’t reply beyond vague hums and nods, chattering about how much she likes cooking but how lazy she is most of the time, and how pretty the town is when you’re not bothered by the general lack of sunlight and the slowly spreading corruption next door.

  


(She doesn’t ask about his eyes. He’s grateful for that.)

  


“About that—“She shushes him, and he huffs but waits until she drops a plate in front of him. Illidan digs in with a grateful nod and continues. “I walked through a part of _that_ on my way here. What happened?”

  


“The Legion happened.” She shrugs. “You’re a druid, right?”

  


Mildly confused by her answer (the Legion, _again_?) and unwilling to outright lie to her face, he also shrugs and keeps eating.

  


“Well, then you probably saw them last time you were awake, right?” She says. “Damn, I can’t believe you’re ten thousand year old. You’re older than this city, but you barely look older than _me_.” He quirks an eyebrow at her. She stops, realizes she got sidetracked, and chuckles a bit. “But, yeah, we're not sure why— something in the human kingdoms? I think the high elves have something to do with it, they always do, but who knows what’s going on out there. Anyway, the Legion came back, and Lady Tyrande has been waking the lot of you up to fight the corruption of the woods. Didn’t she tell you?”

  


Hearing this name, Illidan freezes and has to stop himself from frowning outwardly.

  


“There wasn’t the time,” He says.

  


She sighs and stuffs her fork into her mouth before speaking, which is frankly a bit disgusting. “I haven’t been outside this forest, _ever_. I’m probably not the best suited to tell you what has been going on, now that I think about it.”

  


Well, at least she was awake for some of it, which definitely makes her better suited to history lessons than him.

  


“Oh.” Illidan rests his head on his hand and looks at her, _truly_ looks. She doesn’t have a speck of magic in her whole body — he wasn’t aware that was even possible for them. And she’s young, younger than he was when the Legion first came: no wonder she takes it with such levity. She thinks if they fought them off once, they will do it again; she doesn’t know what had to be done, simply to _hold them back_.

  


What has to be done now, if they want to survive — no, if they want to _win_.

  


“But I’m, huh. I’m kind of a bookworm?” She smiles, clearly proud of it. He immediately likes her a little bit more for it. “So I know a _lot_ , and the rest you can find in the library. I can take you there tomorrow.”

  


“Why not now?”

  


“Dude,” She starts, then stops. “Huh. Sir. You can barely walk, so I thought I could just— give you a crash course in recent history for now?”

  


There’s a headache building at the back of Illidan’s mind, exhaustion spreading from his aching muscles to his entire body, a kind of dull, bone-deep pain that he doesn’t feel eager to make disappear. Sleeping would deal with most of his problems but then again, sleeping might also be one of those.

  


He nods.

  


“Great! Then let’s get starting. How do you feel about tea?”

  


-

  


Ylldraeth seems genuinely happy to have someone to talk to, and Illidan must admit that what she lacks in precision in her improvised lesson, she makes up for with sheer enthusiasm. History is something Illidan has only ever felt a grudging interest for, mostly because he didn’t have any other choice than learn about it — as is the case now — but Ylldraeth is obviously passionate about it, and she manages to make it less tedious.

  


The fact that she's trying to bring him up to date with the last ten millenniums plays a big part in his interest, too. So much happened — night elves have changed little, as he expected, but the world has become a strange place.

  


Despite glossing over the finer details of things and only keeping to major events, it still takes Ylldraeth a few hours to tell him everything. He has to stop her multiple time from getting off-tracks and going on about whatever political turmoils has been going on in the Dwarven kingdoms — what are the odds that the first person to find him would be such a history _nerd_? — and, by the time she's done, her voice is hoarse and his mind going a mile a second to understand and memorize this mess.

  


“Well, that's most of it at least,” She says and sighs. “Consider yourself up to date with most of Azeroth's history, and myself absolutely not ready to become a teacher. By the Moon, I've never talked so much in my life.”

  


His reply is distracted and he's looking off into the distance. “I'm sure a crowd of eager students would be a far different public than I.”

  


She pauses with her glass of water halfway to her lips. “Yeah, obviously. A harder one, most likely.”

  


“I don't know. _They_ wouldn't have missed ten thousand years of historical facts, unless you make it your specialty to teach freshly-awaken druids.”

  


“You know what, maybe I will.” She winks. “If they're all as easy on the eyes as you, it might be worse the parched throat.”

  


He snorts and decides not to comment on that. Instead, he asks, “Do you have a map, by any chance?”

  


–

  


In the end, Illidan doesn't read his way through Astranaar's library. The situation of the world is… more dire than he expected, and although he itches to get his hand on some more precise documents, especially about the different races whose apparition he has missed, he doesn't have the time.

  


The world, it seems, is ending. Again. Illidan likes to think he has gotten descent at stopping the apocalypse, or at least he has enough of a grasp on the inner workings of one to maybe, if he's lucky, stop it from happening. It kind of feels like his duty to do that; something about his responsibilities in the first invasion of the Legion. He knows, rationally, that he shouldn't feel as guilty as he does, but somehow, being young and stupid isn't enough to placate his conscience. He should have been better; Malfurion had been, after all.

  


(But Malfurion wasn't lonely and bitter, Malfurion hadn't been abandoned by the only people who loved him, Malfurion didn't feel the crushing pressure of what others expected of him, Malfurion wasn't soulless—

  


Neither is Illidan, now, so he'll be better. He has to, for his soulmate's sake.)

  


Well. Illidan is, by nature, a selfish creature: he _really_ wants to get his revenge on Sargeras's forces, and saving the world while doing so sounds like a nice perk.

  


So he thanks Ylldraeth for her hospitality, bids her his farewell, and heads out back where he's from. No sacrifice is too much when it comes to stopping the Legion, and he must get stronger even if it means forsaking his soul, his morals, just to get one chance to stab them in the back, because a frontal assault would never work—

  


Walking in the rising sun that still burns his eyes, the weight of sleep deprivation heavy on his mind, Illidan traces the words on his wrist and thinks, _Just a little bit longer._

  


His soulmate deserves everything he can give them and more, and he'll save the world if that's what it takes to keep them safe.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> stay tuned for Kael'thas's POV and actual romance and stuff
> 
> save a writer, write a comment!


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It is a burden and an honor to rule a kingdom where the dead outnumbers the living, and Kael'thas has never felt less qualified for a job.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “wow, 7k words of semi-character-study, you must really like Illidan!” well guess what I love Kael'thas even more
> 
> tbh it's only this long because I kept nerding out about magic 
> 
> because of lack of access to canon, dialogues are all over the place. who cares about canon anyway, am i right?
> 
> i wrote more than half this chapter while procrastinating on my school work, so it might tastes faintly like academic failure
> 
> big thanks to [dnitegirl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dnitegirl/pseuds/dnitegirl) who beta'd this chapter despite having actual work to do and it being christmas and all

Ask the average human to describe the high elves and they'll call them prideful and vain and magical — this will probably be the extent of their knowledge on the subject. It would be true, to a point, in the same way as saying the sea is vast would be true. They are prideful and vain, with a taste for magic that rivals most mortal appetites; on this they are right. But high elves are so much _more_ _t_ han others give them credit for, and Kael’thas finds himself thinking it was a mistake to isolate themselves from those who could now have helped them. Great as their society might be, it cannot face the Scourge alone. No one can.

 

If only they had known that before. And perhaps a better man, a better ruler, would know how to make the most of the situation, how to save them from their own folly, but there is no better man. There is only Kael’thas, and reluctantly, at that.

 

It is a burden and an honor to rule a kingdom where the dead outnumbers the living, and Kael'thas has never felt less qualified for a job.

  
  
  
As a child, Kael'thas had never seen his status as something special. It was his life; something so familiar, so mundane, that it was difficult for him to imagine anything different. To his young mind, everyone else must have been living like royalty, too.

  
  
Growing up, he learned more of his position and his duties, and what seemed so normal became an oddity: he was an exception, in a league of his own and, somehow, this fact didn't seem like something to be proud of. It was lonely, first of all, and boring as well.

 

So Kael’thas found something else, something that was just as much his birthright as the crown. He found magic and he worked on that instead; and, as it often goes with things you work hard on and things you are naturally good at — of which magic was both —, he grew attached to it, to a point where his princely duties were but a footnote to his magical studies.

 

When he could find a few free hours in his schedule, he spent them holed up in the large library of the palace, pouring over dusty tomes and learning magic at such a pace that, more often than not, his tutors were only useful in that they could supervise him, as his father had forbidden him from using his magic alone.

  
  
(Which he did, often, but what the king didn't know couldn't hurt him.)

 

And when he couldn’t find those free hours, he created them, skipping class to go hide in some corner and read. He’s not sure his teacher in political history would even recognize him, given how little time he actually spent in his class.

 

His chronic absenteeism notwithstanding, Kael’thas was a bright if not beloved student. But here’s the thing: the prince was well-loved by his people and not by his tutors because, to tell the truth, he wasn't much of a prince at all — and it was their job to make sure he lived up to his title, hence the conflict. He openly scorned nobility and never ran out of praise for the little people; he often snuck out of the palace to walk the streets, and knew most of the street vendors in Quel'thalas by name. He cared little about honorifics; they even tended to irritate him. 'Prince' and 'Your Majesty' only talked to his status and power; most people had learned to call him by his name, and many servants had addressed him with an affectionate 'Kael' in front of his father because of sheer habit. This careless refusal of proper language was only one of the many things that gave his father a headache but only served to endear him further to his subjects.

 

Anasterian was a kind and fair ruler, but Kael'thas wasn't a ruler at all; he was many things — a prodigy, a mage, a child, a warrior — but it was clear from the start that a king wasn't one of them. As much as he loved his people, he wanted nothing less than to rule them; his head wasn't suited to a crown.

 

His studies with the Kirin Tor brought him even further away from his royal status — there he was just another student among hundreds, and his so-called teenage rebellion had become such a part of his personality that hearing anyone referring to him as ‘prince’ was likely to make him ‘accidentally’ lose control of his magic, if only to silence the offender. At this time of his life, there were only two things who still anchored him to what he referred as his ‘old life’: Rommath, his closest friend for years, and his soulmark.

 

It was written in Darnassian — an oddity, so it was fitting for him — and, as such, at least half the reason he had learned the language so early. The handwriting looked as if its owner had learned proper calligraphy and then promptly forgotten most of it. The result of that was both elegant and sloppy, and in this barely-legible scrawl was written, ‘It is an honor and a pleasure to meet you, Prince Kael'thas'. This was the kind of things he heard every day in court, but no one of noble blood would be caught dead with such a handwriting. This detail was why, despite the words — which he ought to hate —, Kael’thas found his mark __terribly endearing_ _. Rommath had said once that the superposition of the messy script, the obvious remnants of a fine penmanship and the downright distinguished phrase in an archaic language was exactly the kind of mark you would expect from someone like him. Kael’thas chose not to think too hard about what he meant by that — with his friend, it tended to be the best thing to do.

 

His father's worries that he wouldn't be suited for the throne were perfectly understandable. Kael'thas even agreed with his father on this at least: he saw himself as a mage first and a prince only second. The high elves should only be led by someone who put Quel'thalas before everything else.

 

The blood elves, on the other hand? They don’t have much of a choice in the matter, really, so Kael’thas will do.

 

They lost everything to the Scourge: their kingdom, their capital city, their magic. Silvermoon was the heart of Quel’thalas, home to their people, no matter what corner of the continent they lived in when the Scourge came, and all of them felt it when it fell — they mourned it, and with it they mourned the high elves as a whole. There was nothing left of them but ashes and blood, and so they gathered those remnants — those fleeting rests — and made them into warpaints, they took their broken hearts and sharpened them into swords, they took their meaningless name and turned it into a cry for revenge and a reminder of what they lost.

 

Quel’thalas fell and the blood elves rose from the ashes, led by a phoenix prince. __Fitting_ _ , he thought, and the blood on his tongue tasted less like copper and more like a promise. For a moment, after the chaos and before the true weight of the world settled on his shoulders, he knew that, as the sun rises every morning, so would they.

 

 

Kael’thas stands in the wake of Garithos’s passage and remembers those times when he could throw himself wholly into his studies without a care in the world. In that instant he longs for home more than he's ever wanted anything in his life, so painfully it's like a knife through his chest.

 

He remembers back when his people addressed him like an old friend and only those of his own standing dared to use his titles, and how right both had felt. Now he stands at an odd place; only a prince to a people in exile and at the mercy of everyone else, feeling like a child in grown-up clothes and with a stolen crown on his head. He only hears his title from the mouth of other blood elves nowadays, all made wanderers by Arthas's rampage and desperate for what little stability his presence gives them. Anyone else cares little for courtesy, and he has learned to expect scorn to outright insults from the human forces.

 

Foot soldiers aren't the worst, though. Of course they aren't — they're not those sending his people to the slaughter. Still, as much as he claims to have a thick skin, he misses his father's affectionate nicknames, the easy friendliness of his subjects, the comfort it used to bring him to forget he ever held the title of prince.

 

In those moments, Kael'thas follows the looping script written on his left wrist and finds strength in the familiar words. He used to take them for granted; now, the easy admission of his status by an absolute stranger is a source of comfort he would never have expected.

 

That’s definitely a thing he won’t get from Grand Marshal Garithos, that’s for sure.

 

“My prince?”

 

Kael’thas lets his shoulders fall with a weary sigh. He turns his head and looks at Rommath, who tries very hard to hide his disgust and doesn’t quite manage. Kael’thas can only agree with the sentiment. “Well, let’s get to it,” He replies. “It’s not like we have a choice on the matter.”

 

–

 

So Kael'thas is very much a blood elf. He's a rather tame example of one, certainly — the Kirin Tor could not be further from the elven mindset if they tried and he has lived there for a very long time — but he belongs to his kingdom as much as it belongs to him, from his appearance to his culture to the way he scoffs at Dalaran's architecture and says, We did it first and we did it better.

 

Alright, maybe blood elves are kind of pricks, a little. At least they're not stuck-up; their society is known for being the, huh. Most liberated would be a way to put it— they have a small drug problem and monogamy has fallen a bit out of style in the last century or so, which really tells you all you have to know about the way the rest of Azeroth sees them. They're not the worst, though.

 

That'd be the night elves.

 

To be fair, Kael'thas never had the dubious honor of meeting many kaldorei before, so his opinion of them might be quite tainted by his first impressions of the few he's made a tentative alliance with.

 

The priestess is nice enough and so beautiful he briefly forgot how to talk the first time he saw her— he has nothing to say against her. She's never been anything but kind to him and his people, eager to help them in their plight, and he's pretty sure she might be the leader of the night elves, which awakens his hard-learned instinct to be his most polite, charming self when talking to royalty. He likes her, although she could use being a little less— kaldorei.

 

(They're very, very old, and it shows in the way they act if not in the way they look.)

 

But the so-called Warden— by the Light, she's terrifying. Kael'thas's worst ex-girlfriend has nothing on that woman's level of sheer obsession for her charge. The Betrayer, she calls him— Tyrande, the priestess, told him his name is Illidan. At this point Kael'thas doesn't know what he expects of the mysterious character: a literal demon bent on destroying everything they hold dear, or a regular night elf driven insane by having to listen to Maiev's ravings for ten thousand years? Both would be interesting in their own way, although the second option would be the easiest to understand. He, too, is starting to feel like an alliance with the Legion would be a better fate than following the Warden and her troops as she tracks her prey like a rabid hound.

 

A part of him can understand her obsession; ten thousand years underground, guarding the cell of such a threat, must do some awful things to the mind. That's without addressing the consequences of seeing millenniums of effort thrown to the void when the reason for your presence here simply waltzes out of confinement. And then, mere hours later, the one who threw him here waltzes in, ready to slaughter them if they refuse to release him? That’s just adding insult to injury.

 

When Maiev offhandedly mention those events, like some frustrating but mild inconvenience that happened years ago rather than a few weeks prior at most, Rommath meets Kael'thas's eyes from across the campfire and silently mouths 'what the fuck'. Kael'thas can only agree to the sentiment.

 

Night elves are something else, that's for sure.

 

Maybe it wouldn't be so bad if the entire sin’dorei society weren't based on an ideology the kaldorei have hated for thousand of years, but it kind of is, which leads to some interesting conflicts of ideas.

 

Their society has changed so little in ten thousand years they still apparently speak the same language — Kael'thas is fluent in Highborne-Darnassian for academic reasons, what's their excuse? — and are ruled by the same person. At least the crown of Quel'thalas changes head every-so-often, despite staying in the family. And that's not talking of their culture: it's been centuries since the Light has last refused its blessing to same-sex couples in human kingdoms, even more time in Quel'thalas — where they are notably known for hardly being satisfied with one partner, let alone one gender — but Tyrande frowns in confusion when she sees Lavreen Songmeddow kissing her two girlfriends at camp.

 

When they deign answer his incessant questions on their society — Tyrande more often than Maiev, who seems to see him as an obstacle to her goal __at best__ — he learns that most of what they tell him, he has read in history books before; but those are antiques, and he realizes this is what it means to be immortal. Stagnation, pure and simple. Having your life be the same today as it was yesterday and will be tomorrow — the thousand of years of your life summarized in two lines in dusty archives.

 

Blood elves are chaotic people, living for pleasure more than anything. They have a great number of issues and stereotypes that they will be dreadfully slow to change, but already some of them are fighting for this change. It seems to him that night elves are barely aware there is something different from their millenniums-old way to do things, and he can only hope that their venture into the modern world will change this a little.

 

Highbornes, Kael'thas suspects, must have been the worse of the kaldorei society, if they were anything like modern high elves (self-centered, magic-obsessed hedonists) and kind-of-modern night elves (stuck-up, conservatives isolationists). Either one alone was terrible, although Kael'thas was very fond of the sin'dorei own brand of terrible, but both at once? Now that's a nightmare the world isn't ready for.

 

And it wasn’t ready then either, if it’s true they caused the Sundering. See what happens when you mix two kinds of elves? The world downright breaks, that's what.

 

Kael'thas would be impressed if he wasn't worried about what associating with those particular night elves would do to him. Maybe Rommath was right when he said Kael'thas shouldn't be allowed to make his own decisions — it was decades ago, but since then Kael'thas has majored in three different schools of magic at once and allied himself to their infamous living ancestors, and he's sure Rommath only feels more validated in his opinion by his latest choices. Horrified, perhaps, but validated nonetheless.

 

Somehow it keeps getting worse.

 

Kael'thas can deal with close-mindedness and stereotypes. He can deal with the poorly-concealed disdain night elves feel for his kind — hell, at least they try to conceal it. But then Tyrande falls into a river and they keep going, and that sets the mood for the walking disaster that his life is slowly becoming.

 

Because Maiev Shadowsong is a fascinating individual, smart and competent to the point it becomes scary, but she also jumps from quick-witted humor to seething hate in a second, forgoes sleep or food in favor of always going forward, and sometimes it even looks like she forgets she's not alone in her hunt. She is, in short, all kinds of crazy, and working with her is— an experience, to say the least.

 

Rommath keeps sending him pointed looks behind her back and Kael'thas keeps doing his best to ignore them. It won't keep him off his back forever, but for now he's trying to keep them alive and he's not sure which one between Maiev on the warpath and exhaustion is going to kill them faster, so he doesn't have the time to listen to his adviser’s rants.

 

 

They find another kaldorei — a druid, this time, and it takes Kael'thas all of his poor impulse control to keep himself from jumping on the poor guy. He has so many questions and they have so few sources on druidism, mostly because ninety percents of the Order has been hibernating for a few thousand years. He's curious, alright? But he keeps his mouth shut and pretends he doesn't see Rommath briefing his so-called 'spy network' on the best way to wheedle information out of the elusive druid.

 

Rommath always got his back, he's a great friend like that.

 

As long as he's the one getting in trouble, Kael'thas doesn't care. He just doesn't take well to rejection and it would look quite bad, to have the leader of the blood elves try to throttle an archdruid in frustration because the man wouldn't talk to him about the inner secrets of the Order.

 

Malfurion, he's called— not a bad guy, all things considered. A little out of it, but Kael'thas guesses he would be too if he had just woken up from a ten thousand years magical coma.

 

They have a quick discussion on the road, small-talk and such, but once he discovers Kael'thas's interest in druidism, he seems to open up, letting down walls Kael'thas hadn't even noticed he had.

 

(Kael'thas notes that Malfurion seems— disquieted, by his use of magic. Kaldorei used to be the greatest magic users in Azeroth, but apparently the secession between Highbornes' arcane mages and the rest of their people goes as far as Malfurion's time. He's surprised: the blood elves' origins were poorly recorded, and he had no idea kaldorei had all but abandoned arcane magic so long ago.)

 

Apparently, one can only spend so many millenniums with only other druids for company before needing some fresh air, so to speak. He obviously has the heart of a teacher — the way Maiev addresses him highlights that fact — and seems delighted to have someone to teach to, other than the druids who probably heard the same spiel a thousand times in as many years by now.

 

The way he explains the core elements of druidism is so interesting, so novel, Kael'thas almost wants to try his hand at it himself. Almost being the key word here; he doesn't like how much meditation it takes.

 

“My brother would like you,” Malfurion says wistfully, looking at Kael'thas and seeing right through him, or maybe seeing someone different in his place. “He was a brilliant mage but never got along with Cenarius's way of teaching — too much meditation, as you said yourself.”

 

Sounds like someone Kael'thas would get along with, if only said brother was on the more laid-back side of the kaldorei spectrum. “Was?” He notes. “Was he one of the casualties of the first invasion of the Legion?”

 

“Something like that, yes.”

 

Kael'thas knows when not to push an issue and Malfurion quickly changes the subject. He goes on about the more technical details of druidic magic; among other things, how they can take enough energy from the nature around them to fuel their own power.

 

“Should you be telling me this?"

 

“Well, in your case, it's only theory.” Malfurion scratches his cheek sheepishly. “It's a hard art and, even though I have no doubt you'd get the hang of it in no time, you can't. You're, huh. You're saturated with arcanic energy, both because you're a mage and because high— sorry, blood elves, are inherently connected to the Sunwell, from what you told me.”

 

Kael'thas hums in agreement, already rewriting his own personal chart of the magic schools in his head. “But— Water magic. Not common at the Kirin Tor, but not unheard of either, considered to be a combination of Arcane and Nature? I think so at least.”

 

“That's different. The two can interact, but it's— it needs balance, you see?” Malfurion raises his hand and droplets of water gather between his fingers. “Druidism is like… Like coaxing nature into helping you. Novices are often imprecise because they don't know how to communicate clearly yet, they don't know how to listen. Arcane isn't alive the way nature is, because nature is a living thing that exudes magic while arcane is pure magic— does that make sense?”

 

Kael'thas nods, eyes intent on the water circling Malfurion's hand. There's more, now, and it moves like it has a mind of its own. Like his fire but different, somehow.

 

“So, to manipulate water, you have to communicate with it, but you have to control it as well. It's a difficult balance to reach, almost impossible to someone only used to one magic or the other. Druids are often reluctant to push against magic because nature tends to retaliate, and mages never think to learn how to communicate because, as far as they're concerned, there's no communication to be had.” The water gathers in a sphere hovering slightly above the palm of his hand. “I can guess that few blood elves have managed to master this particular school of magic?”

 

“Indeed,” Kael'thas says. “The only one I've known to be able to do anything like that had been taught by Tauren shamans — guess her idea was better than I thought. And even she could do nothing like you did, pulling water out of thin air like that. Condensation, I suppose?”

 

Malfurion nods approvingly and he feels a little like he's back at the Kirin Tor, searching for his teachers' approbation. “Even if she learned to communicate with nature as a shaman or a druid can, there's still the issue of her nature.” He shrugs. “Magic is loud. It's like if nature magic were a flute and arcane magic a lute— the more of one instrument there is, the harder it is for the other to make itself heard. And you blood elves are as much blood as you are arcane — this mage you talk about was trying to teach the flute to an orchestra of violins. It's unfortunate, but she'd have to work thrice as hard to get to the same result, and only because of her nature.”

 

Kael'thas muses on this for a minute. It's an interesting idea and the more he thinks about it, the more sense it makes. Although many mages are better suited to some elements over others, blood elves are known for having the hardest time mastering magic outside of their favored school. They can, and they have: Kael'thas himself is specialized in Fel-tainted magic, but he knows his way around more 'basic' arcane magic, as well as a few holy spells — although anything related to spirit magic is completely lost to him. He can even cast some frost magic, although he hates it with a passion: it's cold and the element that was the hardest element to master for him, which means he has some remaining frustration from his early years as a student of Archmage Farehar Tamlen, who gave him the worst grades of his academic careers because __any mage worth their salt knows how to cast at least one frost spell, Kael'thas_ _ _._

 

(He never had to use this damn spell again, not even for his final exams, and took his revenge by stealing Tamlen's seat in the council from under his nose. Serves him right.)

 

The point is: blood elves are born with magic, but it's harder to unlearn something you've known for your whole life than to learn something new. Humans, on the other hand, take more time to master any kind of magic, but all of them take a similar amount of effort — it's rare for one of them to have as big a preference for one element as an elf, and when they do it's not much of an obstacle on the path to learning its opposite. They had explained it either by habit, education or a mix of both, but maybe Malfurion is right — maybe the Sunwell's effect on their race is bigger than they thought.

 

And then the druid turns to him with a grin, the ball of water held in his hand, and says, “Prepare to run,” before he throws the ball at Maiev, for once helmet-less.

 

(Her scream of pure rage is loud enough that any animal in the forest would have ran away if they hadn't already left the vicinity.)

 

 

So yes, Kael'thas gets along just fine with Malfurion. He's a good man as long as they don't go into political debates — and he knows better than to do that — and although he has a slight superiority complex in terms of magic, he clearly respects other opinions to an extent: Kael'thas would like night elves a hell of a whole lot if they were all a bit more like him.

 

And then, he meets Illidan.

 

Well, they don't actually meet. Malfurion and Maiev meet Illidan — does it count as a first impression if it's been ten thousand years since the last time you saw each other? — and Kael'thas watches the events unfold with a good amount of morbid curiosity.

 

The man they've been tracking for so long does, actually, look like a demon, what with the horns and the wings and the burning eyes. It's uncanny to see such demonic attributes on someone who's still quite obviously elven; the few warlocks Kael'thas has met in the last years had many faults, but at least they didn't turn themselves into demons. Well, at least he hopes they don't.

 

(He wouldn't be that surprised to learn that they do: warlocks are terrifying and far from sane. He doesn't know if that's due to their magic and its known corruption of its user, or the way they've acquired their knowledge about it; summoning demons, after all, was something the first Horde brought on Azeroth — since then, there have been no other way to learn the art but to torture an orc warlock and hope they'll spit out the secrets of their dark masters. A dreadful way of learning anything, if you ask him.)

 

Even his voice sounds strange, gravely and hoarse like he's not used to speaking. He wouldn't, if he's spent the last ten millenniums alone in a cell guarded by people who hate his guts. But the way he talks to his twin ( _ _something like that__ indeed, and doesn't that make him reconsider everything he's learned both about the prisoner and that mysterious, dead brother) is perfectly elven, fueled by emotions who barely make it to the surface before being hidden under a layer of cold rage and rationality.

 

There's nothing rational about Illidan Stormrage and Kael'thas just wants to look into his head to understand how he works. He's heard so much about this guy, from Maiev and Tyrande and in two different ways from Malfurion, and he can't quite match those descriptions to the man he sees now.

 

He's dragged out of his observation by Malfurion's voice. It rises and breaks, half a yell choked by grief. “What you did— Tyrande died because of your actions!”

 

For a moment, everything stops. Maiev's mouth clicks shut as she stops her one-sided argument with the druid; Malfurion stands still, breathing hard and his eyes shining faintly; and Illidan—

 

Illidan falls silent and then he says, so quiet they barely hear it, “Tyrande's dead?”

 

And those few words are so sad, so full of grief and pain, that Kael'thas chokes up for a second. No demon could sound this sad, especially not about the death of the woman who threw him in prison for so much time. Kael'thas steps forward.

 

“I wouldn't say that, my lord.”

 

Malfurion turns sharply to look at him. So does Maiev, and Illidan — whom he can only see in the corner of his eye, but he glows in the dark and is, as such, very noticeable. Kael'thas feels like he should have stage fright for a moment, but fortunately he has said worst things to worst audiences before

 

“While it is true that Lady Tyrande was swept downriver, my lord, there are no proofs that she hasn't survived her ordeal. Considering her dead might still be a bit pessimistic.”

 

Maiev hisses a __shut up__ that goes unheard. Malfurion's head snaps toward her, and she holds his gaze as he calls her a traitor. Illidan's eyes, though, never leave Kael'thas.

 

He turns and faces the disquieting stare, tilting his head to the side in a silent question. Illidan stares for a little longer — can he even see anything? Maybe he's just looking toward the source of their voice. Then, he lightly shakes his head, and preparations are made to go save Tyrande. Illidan, as he suspected he would, proposes to go himself, and Malfurion reluctantly agrees.

 

Malfurion's shoulders slump as soon as the so-called demon hunter is gone. He doesn't look toward Maiev, quietly raging next to him, and only offers Kael'thas a tired nod in thanks. The shock of the revelation and talking to his wannabe world destroyer of a twin brother must have taken a lot from him.

 

“Now, we can just hope that he reaches her in time,” He sighs. At Kael'thas's curious look, he adds, “I know he'll do everything in his power to keep her safe, but there is nothing he can do if she—”

 

Kael'thas hesitates for a second, and rests his hand on the druid's forearm. “I'm sure they'll be alright.” But his reassurance is distracted, his mind already turned elsewhere, to the enigma that Illidan is starting to become. No one seems to be able to keep their facts straight about him.

 

“For her sake, I hope so."

 

 

Illidan does manage to bring Tyrande back, and he's met with only slightly less hostility than before. Kael'thas doesn't hear the words the three of them exchange from where he is watching, but Malfurion looks very grave, and Illidan leaves with a slow nod and a resolute tilt to his mouth.

 

Kael'thas hopes this is not the last he'll see of him — he has questions, alright? There's so much he wants to know.

 

But with him gone, Kael'thas and his people are free to leave the night elves to go back to their second least favorite people: the New Alliance.

 

Malfurion stops him shortly before they depart.

 

“Tell me, Kael, have you ever tried to use the Fel?”

 

Taken aback by the question, Kael'thas shakes his head. “No, of course not.” Why would a druid ask him that? Is this a test? Light, Kael'thas hates tests.

 

“I see.” Malfurion nods, apparently satisfied with the answer. “You just— smell like it, I guess."

 

Smell? Kael'thas wrinkles his nose. If he's starting to smell like a dreadlord, they've been spending too much time on the road. He needs a shower; fire and brimstone is __not__ a good look on him.

 

Malfurion chuckles at his expression. “Ah, no, I didn't express myself correctly. But magic leaves a trace, you see? To druids, especially in feral form, it's closer to a smell like anything else.”

 

Kael'thas nods. That, he understands. It's more of a feeling to him, but all senses are touched by remnants of magic.

 

“And I thought— well, you smell like arcane as much as you smell like Fel, that's all.”

 

Kael'thas blinks and then tilts his head to the side, wondering. “Well, my specialties are fire and air magic — both, we think, take root partly in Fel energy. It would explain it.”

 

“Why, pray tell, have you chosen those elements in particular?”

 

“I've always been most comfortable with them than any other,” Kael'thas says. He shrugs. “I don't know, they just feel right.”

 

Once again, Malfurion nods, but he looks thoughtful for a moment. Soon enough he's smiling again, and Kael'thas wonders if he imagined it. “I won't keep you for longer. Safe travel, Prince Kael; it was an honor and a pleasure to meet you.”

 

Kael'thas almost falls off his mount at those words and very pointedly doesn't run away; they're just short on time, that's all.

 

-

 

They throw him in a cell and call him a traitor to the Alliance, as if it weren’t the Alliance who had betrayed them first, throwing blood elves at the Scourge like so much canon fodder. The blood of Kael’thas’s people is on their hands, and so much has been spilled that they could paint Stormwind’s walls red with it. Let them drown in it; that’s all those beasts deserve.

 

Humans have killed too many blood elves already — Arthas first and then Garithos, and every human condoning his acts as well. It’s time for the tables to turn.

 

The bars buzz with arcane magic, deafening static that makes it impossible to even think, let alone cast a spell. Still, there are two guards posted a few feet from him, as Garithos has apparently gained a higher opinion of Kael’thas’s abilities now that he sees him as an enemy rather than just a pointy-eared nuisance. It would almost be flattering if Kael’thas had anything left to actually fight back — harsh language will only get him so far, after all.

 

(He was the one to perfect those enchantments — had been the one to oversee the slow engraving of each cell, making sure the suppressing magic worked as much as it should. The empty feeling in his chest is familiar from when he tested it on himself, and it only makes it worse to know even he can’t get out of there.)

 

The guards seem to think their tone of voice is low, or maybe they don’t care about being heard when they discuss of how little they think of their prisoners. The words are indecipherable but the tone is clear, and Kael’thas grits his teeth around the snarl trying to escape him. In the cell next to his, someone lets out a string of colorful swears. Rommath, he presumes: the damn buzzing makes it almost impossible for him to concentrate on anything but the way it makes his teeth ache, but he’s the only one Kael’thas knows with such a vocabulary when it comes to profanities.

 

Kael'thas leans back against the wall and brings his legs closer, trying to ward off the cold without outright curling into a ball — which would doubtlessly please their captors to no end. He feels empty, and the cold of the stone walls seeps through his clothes and fills this emptiness with a bones-deep chill that leaves him shivering. The only warmth is that of magic but it's just out of reach, so deep into the stone he wouldn't know of his presence if he hadn't been the one to supervise it's installation. In his chest, it feels like a dead campfire, cooling ashes and the memory of flames.

 

Kael'thas, to be quite honest, misses his magic, and not only because its lack leaves him both lethargic and restless at once, a moment away from clawing out of his skin, out of the cell, out of this Light-forsaken country and the undead horde roaming it.

 

Being a mage is more than speaking in tongues and throwing arcane blasts around. It's — a cohabitation, of sort, between the caster and its magic. In no way is it sentient, or even alive, really, but it's more than an energy source — this is why the gnomes and the goblins can't quite replace it yet; its effects can be imitated, but not what makes it __magic_ _. Thousand of years of magic users and still, the way it works is a mystery; two mages can have two radically different opinions on its inner workings and both be right in a way, and that's only arcane magic— druids, shamans, warlocks, priests, all use magic in ways that are both completely different and exactly like arcane magic.

 

Magic is… a gray area. That's the only way he can begin to describe it. The way it works with itself and its wielders is so unique and so odd that their current system for explaining it will most likely be outdated in a few decades at best and even now, it lacks precision. Already, the reveal of Fel has shaken the Kirin Tor's nice little theory, putting into question the entirety of what they thought to be the truth.

 

His latest thesis was on the influence of Fel on Pyromancy, a follow-up of his previous paper which looked into the hypothesis that the later could be some sort of combination between arcane magic and Fel magic, or maybe — Light forbid! — between holy magic and the Fel. Now, faced with Fel magic in more than theory, Kael'thas can't help but think of the thousand things he could have added to the academic paper, on — among other things — the inherently parasitic nature of Fel and how it influences Fire magic, which is known for being both too wild to master easily and impossible to let go off once you've managed it. Like a forest fire, it slumbers underneath, where you don't go looking for it, and all it needs is a spark— a simple mistake, a strong emotion, and everything goes up in flames.

 

Many have been turned away from the art because of that but Kael'thas loves a challenge, and he has always taken easily to wild magic. Although, now that he thinks about it, his two main schools of magic — Air and Fire — have both been hypothesized to be derivative of Fel magic in the last years. He doesn't know what a natural ease with Fel magic says about him, but it has made him one of the most accomplished mage of their time, so he'll take it.

 

So, magic is odd, and different, and a terribly complicated thing. One thing never changes, though: no mage enjoys being cut from it. Dispossessing a caster of their magic is like blindfolding them, like tying them up, like being a prisoner of your own body. It's nothing like the aching pull of magical exhaustion, which speaks of emptied reserves rather than just plain emptiness.

 

The bars buzz, the soldiers chatter like gossiping magpies, and Kael'thas stands, paces in his cell, counts the number of steps from one end to the other, tries to forget about the way sounds echo in the weird hole where his magic usually is. For once in his life, he hates himself for doing his job so well.

 

And then, suddenly, things are quieter. The voices outside the cell are silenced at once, a barely-audible gasp and then nothing else. When Kael’thas looks up, the guards are motionless on the ground; each has an arrow embed in the throat, and a pool of blood slowly grows under their prone bodies.

 

Lady Vashj stands over the corpses.

 

(Kael’thas wonders: when did his life go so wrong that seeing a snake woman standing over two dead bodies became a good thing?)

 

But she’s a sight for sore eyes, glittering scales and ruthless scowl and all. She’s beautiful in the way natural disasters are beautiful, and Kael’thas would have fallen for her right then and there if only she didn’t look like the kind of woman who would snap his neck and not feel sorry a second about it.

 

She kind of scares him, a little, and he’s not ashamed to admit it. Fearing Lady Vashj seems like the smart thing to do.

 

“We keep meeting in— unfortunate circumstances, my lady,” Kael'thas says. He leans against the bars of his cell; the magic offers a slight resistance before giving in, and the metal under the web of enchantments feels almost warm.

 

She huffs in amusement and slithers out of sight. There's the sound of rattling metal and gears grinding against each others, and then the door disappears into the ground. Kael'thas almost falls flat on his face — the way he stumbles forward is devoid of any grace and he hears Rommath chuckle from his own cell.

 

But the slight embarrassment is so, so worth it. The enchantments are reluctant to let him go and wisps of magic linger, but they disappear like smoke when his magic slams back into him.

 

(Magic never feels the same to two people. To Kael'thas, it is like this: fire in his veins and embers in his chest, sparks at his fingertips and hunger, like flames consuming everything they touch and only leaving ashes. It feels a bit like coming home and a lot like waking up with his eyes already open.)

 

Finally, warmth infuses his limbs as his magic settles under his skin once more. Kael'thas rolls his shoulders, cracks his neck and turns toward their reptilian saviors. Lady Vashj observes him with a wry twist of her mouth, as if she knows exactly what he's feeling but still feels inclined to make fun of him for it. He would have let it pass — although whether or not he allows it probably doesn't mean anything to her — but she refrains from it, and Kael'thas feels a surprising surge of affection for her.

 

She has, after all, never been anything but kind and helpful to him, and her jabs had never held any true aggression — irritation, yes, when she thought he acted stupidly, and her advice was often dealt in sharp, sarcastic remarks, but she was— damn, at this point in his life, Lady Vashj might be the closest thing he has to a friend beside Rommath. Kael'thas, crown prince of Quel'thalas, last heir of the Sunstrider dynasty, has for friends a foul-mouthed archmage and a millenniums-old snake lady. His father must be rolling in his grave.

 

How delightful.

 

“And those circumstances will only get worse if we do not hurry,” Vashj continues — it takes him a second to remember what he just said. “Come, young Kael. There is a portal in the city above — it will lead us to my master.”

 

Part of him recoils at the nickname, but the other half remembers she is close to a hundred time his age and shuts up. There aren't many people who Vashj can't call 'young': at this point, he should just be happy she hasn't taken to calling him 'kid' like his mentor at the Kirin Tor used to.

 

“We'll need to free my lieutenants first,” Kael'thas says, putting back his royal persona like a coat. He feels like a child playing pretend, but pushes the feeling to the dark corners of his consciousness and carries on.

 

“Please do,” Rommath says from behind the bars of his cell. “I'm freezing my ass off in there.”

 

Honestly, Lady Vashj is right: Kael'thas is young. To his people's standards, he's barely an adult. Surely that would explain why he shrugs and pretends to walk right past his friend, saying, “Let's keep this one for last, hm?”

 

Lady Vashj, patience and wisdom incarnate that she is, ignores him and opens Rommath's cell. He appreciates her enough to refrain from muttering 'spoilsport' under his breath, although he probably thinks it so loudly she hears him anyway. It's a testament to her maturity that she doesn't roll her eyes, and to her incredible power that she still conveys the strong feeling of doing just that.

 

–

 

Being a fugitive and a traitor to the Alliance includes more fire and explosions than Kael'thas thought it would, but that might just be because of Grand Marshal Garithos excellent idea of sending suicide bombers to destroy the portal.

 

The man has one hell of a dramatic streak for someone so hateful toward elves.

 

“Fall back! Fall back!”

 

Kael’thas hauls an engineer to her feet and pushes her toward the portal. The woman stumbles but doesn’t fall again despite the blood seeping through her pants leg, and another engineer catches her arm and carries her toward the portal. Kael'thas looks through the smoke, the dust and rubles falling around them making their surroundings indistinct, and turns toward Lady Vashj.

 

“We're the last, I think.”

 

“You think?”

 

There's the arm of an engineer thrown over his shoulders and Kael'thas has his arm looped around his waist trying to prop him up. Apart from him, Vashj and Kael'thas himself, he doesn't catch a glimpse of life in the wreckage. “I'm pretty sure, yes. Might be a few bombers left, though, so if you'd rather wait for them to find their way to us..."

 

Her smile is small but distinctly amused as she nods. “Alright. Lead the way, Kael.”

 

With one last look at Dalaran, or what's left of this part of it, Kael'thas steps through the portal.

 

 

It doesn't feel like any kind of teleportation he knows. Short-distance teleportation spells are like a dream, those where after a blink, your eyes open to another scene. Long-distance ones feels more like walking through a door, only with the added the unpleasant sensation of leftover magic from careless mages.

 

They are nothing compared to this portal. Just looking at it makes Kael'thas feels queasy and excited in equal measures and when he finally steps through it—

 

It feels like falling backward into a river, cold and breathless under the dark water and the current carrying him away, and then he keeps falling. Everything feels both terribly cold and burning hot, too dark and too bright to see. He opens his eyes, not even aware he had closed them, to the shocking realization that he had not, in fact, made a perfect 360 in the air while going through this portal, although it sure feels like it. The world turns for a moment and Kael'thas staggers forward, the weight of the unconscious engineer dragging him down, but soon enough he's standing and none the worse for wear. Well, his hair might be out of place, but you can't have it all.

 

One of his men takes the engineer from his arms with a grateful nod. Now free of the weight, Kael'thas looks around himself and comes to two conclusions immediately:

 

Firstly, this is amazing and he can't wait to learn more about that kind of portals, which are probably used to travel truly __staggering__ distances (ah, ah, he's hilarious).

 

Secondly, he has absolutely no idea of where they are. Nothing looks familiar: the sky is dark and the twin moons washes the dry, rusty dirt in a sickly green hue. It's— different, and strangely alluring in how alien it looks. After the chaos of Dalaran, this new land is a shock, as if they'd been going extremely fast before stopping dead on their tracks; everything is silence except the wind howling across the vast, flat plains below them.

 

The portal behind him lets out a static-y hum before Lady Vashj slithers out of it. She looks as unruffled as ever despite the embers following her from the other side and the soot making her scales black in some places.

 

“Where is this place?” He asks her, gesturing at the sprawling plains around them with a wide swipe of his arms.

 

She dusts herself off before answering. “This, young one, is Outlands — Draenor, as it was once known. The home planet of the Orcs, and what stands beyond the Dark Portal.”

 

Kael'thas gapes at her. It's unbefitting of a prince but to hell with that; he's in exile, and on another planet at that. Rules of etiquette don't apply when you're on the other side of the universe.

 

“You bring me to strange places, my lady,” Kael'thas says, and there's a grin blooming on his face as he looks around with a whole new perspective. He's never been to another world before, obviously, and the possibilities — oh, the possibilities are endless.

 

“What can I say? Your surprise is refreshing.” She scoffs. “My master is— not easily moved, and he puts a truly astonishing amount of effort into looking as aloof and detached as is elvenly possible.”

 

“Luckily for you, I'm somewhat of an expert in surprising people.”

 

-

 

As it turns out, so is Illidan.

 

Kael'thas and Vashj's joined forces have been roaming the aptly named Hellfire Peninsula — although can it really be a peninsula without an ocean around it? — for days now, Lady Vashj's Master having apparently forgotten to give her a map of any kind. Kael'thas isn't one to give up easily but he's about ready to lie down on the ground and wait for death, now; with the quantity of dust he's swallowed and been covered in since they came here, he'll fit right in.

 

Fortunately, he is saved from such a fate by Lady Vashj's sharp senses. She's in the middle of complaining about the terribly dryness of this place — gracious, lady-like complaining, mind you — when suddenly she stops, turns her head, sniffs the air and say, “He's close.”

 

Kael'thas nods and gesture to Rommath who walks a few steps behind, looking dashing in his dust ensemble. A few hand signs (learned when they both attended Magister Ivellan's classes, because as soon as she placed each of them on one side of the amphitheater to stop them from talking it became a challenge) convey the situation, and their troops gradually stop as the message travel through them.

 

The duo crouches behind a pile of red rocks. Below them, a small battalion of night elves — their amors identify them as Maiev’s wardens — surrounds a prison wagon. Between the bars, Kael'thas can just make out the unconscious figure of—

 

“Illidan?” He whispers, taken aback.

 

“You've met?”

 

“For a definition of the word, yes. I helped Maiev track him down a few weeks ago in exchange for her troops' help to my people. Let me tell you that was an eventful week.” He looks at her. “You could have told me you served him.”

 

She huffs. “I didn't think the name would mean anything to you.”

 

“Well, I would have shown a lot more enthusiasm while trekking through this hellscape.” At her knowing look, he rolls his eyes. “He's an interesting individual, that's all.”

 

Rommath joins them before Vashj can show any more disbelief. “What's the plan?” He immediately asks them both without looking at them, eyes strained on the procession below. He gets along fine with Vashj, and even better with her own second-in-command; for once he has no problem listening to orders from someone else. Hell, he gives her less grief than he gives Kael'thas: he'd complain, but actually that just means Rommath is every bit as smart as he pretends to be.

 

Kael'thas glances at Vashj, then turns back to his friend. “The lady and I will take half the squad and remain here. You'll lead the rest somewhere further way; make yourself heard, be a distraction. We will jump in, dispose of the guards still present and hightail it out of there through a portal.”

 

“That's a dumb plan.”

 

“Do you have anything better?” Rommath opens his mouth to say something, then reconsiders and lets it close with a click. “That's what I thought. We don't have the time for a real plan anyway.”

 

Rommath puts his hand around Kael'thas's forearm and squeezes.“Don't die, that's all I'm asking you.”

 

Kael'thas returns the gesture and his features softens as he smiles to his friend. “I don't intend on it. Meet you at camp?”

 

“You got it.”

 

 

The peninsula is covered in rocky formations that can only be differentiated from the ground because they hide the horizon; the view is awful but, as far as tactics go, this is the perfect landscape. Rommath has moved the rest of this battalion behind one of those outcroppings a few miles north, doing his best to be extraordinarily loud about it — one of his specialties. The clamor of a traveling armed force carry very well over the plains and, after some deliberation between them, two dozens of the wardens stay behind while the rest go investigate the strange sounds.

 

They're still outnumbered two to one. They've taken to traveling in small groups since finding a decently hidden hiding hole in which to set camp. At this point in time, Kael'thas and Vashj are leading an exodus rather than an invasion, and it's not worth it to perpetually move their small army. His people haven't had a break from fighting in months, always on the move, always displaced by the Alliance generals, and walking across Outlands for an indeterminate amount of time might just have killed them.

 

While keeping his people alive is all Kael'thas asks for, he kind of wishes they had brought more soldiers with them today. He remembers the wardens as formidable fighters, and had hoped he'd never have to face them in battle. Now that he's on the other side of the battlefield, he prays the element of surprise will be enough for them to get to Illidan in time.

 

“Remember,” He tells the dozen of soldiers around him. “The goal here isn't to kill as many wardens as possible—”

 

“It kind of is,” Lady Vashj hisses.

 

“Yes, alright, it kind of is. But more importantly, we're here on a rescue mission. Don't put yourself in unnecessary danger only to secure a kill: a surviving enemy is better than a dead ally, especially when we are so few.”

 

They nod as one. Kael’thas takes a second to be relieved that both nagas and blood elves look up to the two of them in equal measures, because if they didn’t there’s no way Kael’thas could compete against Vashj in terms of charisma and leading power.

 

“Alright, let’s go.”

 

 

They can’t sneak up on the wardens. No one can, so instead they jump from the outcroppings on which they were hiding and falls on their enemies, which makes up for a lack of discretion with a lot of surprise.

 

Kael’thas aims his fall so that he ends up on the back of a nightsaber. Both mount and rider takes just a second to react, but Kael’thas is already moving, and he stabs the warden in the neck with a knife before she can take her own weapon. Blood splatters his front — Light, he hates fighting in close range. This always happens.

 

The night elf slumps to the side and falls off her nightsaber. Her blood is the same color as the ground and, as Kael’thas watches the dust drinks it quicker than it can spill, he wonders if this is the reason for the earth’s strange color.

 

And then, then nightsaber throws him off too and he goes back to more pressing matters.

 

He hits the ground a few yards away and his momentum is enough that he does a few rolls in the dust before stopping. Coughing and spluttering, Kael’thas stands and turns to the beast. It jumps forward, claws like daggers extended toward him, and he takes an instinctive step back just as fire erupts from his hand. Its roars shakes the ground and then, just before it reaches him, the flames swallow it whole and Kael’thas can sidestep the panicked creature without risking to lose an eye in the maneuver. It drops in the dust and rolls, yowling in pain, but magical flames aren’t so easily extinguished — in seconds, its fur is blackened and it falls lifelessly to the ground.

 

That wasn’t a great idea. It still worked, though.

 

Kael'thas stands still for a second too long, planning his next move, and a blade comes flying above his shoulder and almost goes right through his neck. When he looks behind himself, a Naga is disposing of the warden responsible. She nods respectfully at him, the warden's still outreached hand held between her claws, and he replies by touching two fingers to his chest – a thank and a promise both. He'll remember her face and, in time, he will pay back this blood debt. Soon, probably, considering their situation.

 

This small accident snaps him out of his thoughts. Kael'thas unsheathes Felo'melorn and the blade sings in his hand, runes glowing like fire as his magic connects itself to the legendary sword. Calm washes over him – here, he isn't an exiled Prince in an unknown land. He is a warrior, and nothing exists beyond this battlefield; it is a mindset that has become familiar to him these past weeks. It may not be a __good__ change, or at least a happy one, but it saved his life before so he can hardly complain. Still, he misses his time at the Kirin Tor, because being a mage has never been half as hard as being a prince or a soldier, let alone both at once.

 

(He remembers his father's voice as he taught him how to sword fight, and the memories flood his mind with grief and peace both. As long as he wields this sword, he'll never be alone.)

 

But those times are lost to him and this, blood and ashes sticking to his skin and the bite of warming metal in his hand... This isn't so bad.

 

As long as it hurts, it means he's alive – he's still fighting. For now it will be enough.

 

 

Kael'thas quickly loses himself to the fight. All battles are the same, at the heart of things – like a dance, all you need to do is learn the steps. One, two, three, dodge and throw and parry, each movement written into his mind and each mistake on his skin. Soon everything is a blur, too fast to stop or think or breath – blood splatters his robes and he can't tell if it's his or not.

 

Kael'thas, contrary to expectations, doesn't think his way through a battle. His instinct drives him like pulling the strings of a puppet, and this translates poorly to conscious thoughts.

 

(That's something a recurrent thing in his life, almost a motif — __Kael'thas, contrary to expectations_ _.)

 

When he comes back to himself – when his thoughts snap back to the present like a rubber band, like static electricity when you touch your fingers together after a lightning spell – the ground is the same shade of dark crimson but the dusty dirt sticks to his boots in a thin layer of rust-colored mud. There's a wet sound when he moves his feet, and he almost stumbles on the arm of a warden – her lifeless eyes stare up, toward this strange sky and Azeroth, perhaps, somewhere beyond the empty void of space.

 

It's a tragedy, to die so far from home. Kael'thas shivers at the thought and, almost unwillingly, rests his fingers on the inky-black letters on the inside of his wrist. He can feel his pulse under his fingertips, the way the mark is warmer than the skin around it, and it's a comfort to feel the steady thump-thump of his heart under the chicken scratch handwriting. Despite everything, the death and the taste of copper and sulfur coating his tongue, it's the proof he's still the same; sharper, maybe, where loss broke parts of him and left jagged, brittle edges, but no stranger for it.

 

But the battle is far from over – there is a naga lying dead next to that warden's limp fingers, chest open like some monstrous gutted fish, and the clamor of clashing blades still surrounds him. So Kael'thas sheaths his sword – there's enough blood on the blade that he worries, an instant, that it'll rust, but soon it starts to boils and dissipates in a fine, red mist under the heat of the weapon. Then, he claps his hands together, sparks flying at the point of contact, and slams them against the iron bars of the wagon.

 

They shudder slightly and a bluish glow washes over them, immediately cooling the metal. As he expected: Maiev is far from stupid, of course she would put more than mere iron to keep such a prisoner caged. Still it's an inconvenience, as he clearly doesn't have the time to break through the layers of magic.

 

Fortunately for this great rescue, Kael'thas doesn't actually need to get Illidan out of his prison. It would be easier, sure, but not necessarily safer, considering the spell that undoubtedly kept him unconscious and would react aggressively to Kael'thas's foreign magic.

 

He has seen a coma patient suddenly catch fire upon a healer's touch and the sight had given him a healthy amount of wariness in the face of unknown, powerful enchantments.

 

So Kael'thas sticks to the plan. While their forces make an incredible distraction, both on Rommath's side and on theirs, Kael'thas reaches for his magic and gets to work.

 

There is something about Outlands, the green-tinged air and too-dark sky, that makes his magic wilder, perhaps even darker, somehow. Maybe it's the Fel, and it should worry him, but he can only be relieved when his magic jumps to his fingers and the spell comes to his lips as easy as breathing. Or rather as easy as braiding his hair: portals, after all, are often described to novice as weaving a magical tapestry. Kael'thas is partial to the 'tearing a hole in the fabric of space' analogy himself, as the rather brutal method has never failed him the few times when he had to summon a portal himself, but it also has the bad habit of leaving behind traces that are easily reopened, like poorly-mended rips in a piece of cloth. Right now, they can't afford to be followed, so the slower, more precise method is the best way to go.

 

Rommath would be so proud.

 

He works quickly and efficiently, fingers tracing symbols in the air as he conjures their escape.

 

One moment there is only the wagon and, beyond that, the chaotic movements of the ongoing battle. But as soon as Kael'thas ties the last metaphorical knot of his spell, the air shimmers, as if distorted by heat, and a second later a large portal opens in front of the wagon, sight of their camp hiding the fighting from view.

 

"Vashj!" Kael'thas yells over the clamor. "Let's go!"

 

The Naga shoots an arrow through the throat of a warden and complies, giving orders to the soldiers surrounding her, although he is too far to discern what exactly those orders are. A handful of Nagas slithers toward Kael'thas and, with their joined effort – although Kael'thas is here as moral support more than anything else – they manage to push the wagon through the portal. As soon as it's done, the remaining soldiers jumps out of the fight, and they all run through the portal before the warden can do more than scream in rage.

 

Kael'thas is the last one to pass through. This way, he only has to yank on the spell on his way out, and it collapses on itself in a fiery explosion. The showy destruction, a rather clever use of Kael'thas's naturally unstable magic, serves as a signal to the rest of their forces to also retreat; if they're lucky, it will have taken out anyone in pursuit as well.

 

The portal on their side closes itself with a faint pop. There's a second of silent, motionless wait, everyone kind of holding their breath in anticipation of some terrible, explosive reaction, but nothing happens, and they all start moving again at the same time.

 

Adrenaline drains out of his blood in the matter of a few, panting breaths, and Kael'thas slumps against the bars of the cell as his body suddenly reminds him of the definition of 'exhaustion'. Eyes half closed, he looks at the prone figure of the millenniums-old troublemaker inside and thinks that at least, he'll probably never be bored as long as it stays at his side; it's exciting and kind of tiring just to think about it.

 

"Even unconscious, he's something else, isn't he?" Vashj says, not quite a question. She stands next to him; he hasn't heard her approaching despite the telltale scraping of her scales on the stones.

 

He doesn't say anything beyond a thoughtful hum. The metal is cool against his forehead, soothing his growing headache into something more manageable. Once he feels less like someone is drilling through his skull, he stands straight and cracks his neck.

 

"Shall we begin?"

 

Lady Vashj smiles that faint, pleased smile of hers, not showing any of her sharp fangs, and inclines her head.

 

 

They spend the next several hours working through the mess of magic keeping Illidan caged. It's frustrating for many reasons, the first of all being that whoever created this prison either had no idea what they were doing or wanted nothing more than to make it impossible to safely deactivate the result of their efforts. It's the messiest spell work Kael'thas has ever seen, enchantments conflicting with surface magic, canceling each other in parts and turning into something completely different in others. It's like untangling some hellish ball of multicolored yarn, except here the yarn might explodes if they make a mistake.

 

Disenchanting this prison is a slow, grueling process, which is made marginally worse by the fact that Kael'thas is only about a sharp movement away from taking a leaf out of Illidan's book and falling into a light coma. He almost faints around the three hours mark, and Rommath forces him to take a break by actually sitting on him and staring at him until he eats his whole plate.

 

The advisor's squad came back not long after theirs, maybe an hour or so. They couldn't keep the warden away enough to make a portal to camp, so they ended up a few miles away and had to dispose of any unwanted company before walking back. It means Rommath is just as dead on his feet, if not maybe more, than Kael'thas, but he still pokes and prods at the prison wagon with them. He doesn't dare to try to help them: exceptional as he is at lock picking, his talent only concerns the physical kind. Magic locks are one of the few things that elude him, mostly because they're closer to maths than any other kind of enchantment and Rommath has always been hopeless at anything involving numbers.

 

("I can't believe you're a mage and still doing maths," He used to say to Kael'thas, when they worked together in the Kirin Tor's library, often followed by a faux-concerned, "Who hurt you? Blink twice if you're here against your will."

 

Those are among his best memories; the sun streaming through the high, fogged windows and his best friend giggling like a schoolgirl over Kael'thas's theatrics. It's been a long time since he's heard Rommath laugh.)

 

But Kael'thas isn't deemed a prodigy for nothing, and Vashj has yet to fail at anything; together, they're a force to be reckoned with, and it's only because of this that they only need half a day to tug the last strand of magic free from the tangled mess the enchantment used to be – rather than the week anyone else would have required.

 

The magic snaps and the door, slowly, opens. As soon as it does, Kael'thas looks at Illidan – now free, although they have yet to do anything about him hibernating – and feels the warm contentment of a job well-done.

 

He says, " __Good_ _ " with the absolute certainty of someone finally free from an awful job, and then promptly passes out.

 

 

Kael'thas wakes up to hushed voices, not quiet as much as muffled – there's nothing quiet about blood elves – and bones heavy with exhaustion. Nothing out of the ordinary, then, and it takes him a moment to remember why, exactly, it still feels different, somehow.

 

Firstly, magical exhaustion. He's tired and nothing hurts yet everything aches, like feeling the burn after a workout or whatever Rommath compared it to, because he's the only mage Kael'thas knows who lifts weights as a hobby. Kael'thas hasn't woken up like this since the Kirin Tor – which, thinking about it, isn't that far back – and he hasn't missed it one bit.

 

Secondly, Illidan.

 

Here's the thing with magic: even at its best, it's unpredictable, and yesterday's mess was nothing short of the worst. Dispelling the spell might have woken up Illidan, but there's a very real possibility that it did not; as far as Kael'thas is aware, the guy could be dead, and where would that leave him?

 

Well, he's not going to guess. Kael'thas likes to know his efforts were rewarded; he heaves himself to his feet and kind of stumbles out of his tent, which is actually just a large cloth suspended between three walls of rock and is about as luxurious as Outlands ever get nowadays.

 

The camp is bustling with activity – more than usual, anyway. It took some time to get used to the ever-present half darkness of Outlands, but now there is scarcely an hour without anyone awake, filling the heavy silence whatever way they can. Today, what looks like half their forces are walking around, trying to look like they're busy and kind of failing at it. A few yards from him, a paladin has been sharpening his sword into a toothpick without realizing it, too preoccupied with his obvious gawking to do his work properly.

 

Not that Kael'thas can fault them. Illidan is quite a sight, after all.

 

This answers one of his questions; there were no obvious backlash from them breaking the spell. It's good – fantastic, even. He's a bit too tired still to be properly excited about the news, but he's genuinely happy to know his obscure knowledge of magic layering could help. It was a genuine concern, considering the time and effort spent to meet the man, and he's glad to put it out of his mind.

 

This issue is quickly replaced by another one, which is to say the man himself. The last time he saw Illidan, he was freshly free from his millenniums-long imprisonment and looking exactly as bad as he ought to in such a situation. Now, he looks even more tired than he did back then: running away from Maiev has that effect on people. Kael’thas has questioned her need for sleep many times while fighting at her side, and he used to be so sleep-deprived that each memory he has of her is blurry and dim, as if seen through a fog. She never stops; staying ahead of her must be just as, if not more, tiring than simply keeping up with her insane pace.

 

Apart from that, Illidan looks good — for a given definition of good. The horns, the burning eyes and the needle-sharp teeth, demonic as they may be, aren't a bad look on the so-called Betrayer – although Kael'thas has to admit it might be something of an acquired taste. Also, few could complain about him being shirtless; it allows Kael’thas to easily assess his injuries, among other things, which is of course the first thing that crosses his mind when seeing Illidan up and about so soon after being rescued, bloody and unconscious, from an enchanted prison.

 

The fact that it’s a nice sight doesn’t hurt, though.

 

Kael’thas guesses it’s because of his wings rather than a fashion choice, but if it were, it would be a __great__ one. Not only is Illidan easy on the eyes, but it allows him to clearly display his tattoos. They are an incredible work of art and magic and Kael’thas is not sure of their use yet, but he can think of a few. They could serve as a protection against the corruption of the Fel — despite his appearance, Illidan shows no other symptom usually seen in corrupted individuals, like an irrational thought process or hideous, crippling mutations. Maybe the tattoos help, keeping the Fel contained and far from his internal organs. They also seem to accumulate it, as well as other kinds of magic. This is how Kael’thas can tell that the quick healing of his wounds is due, at least in part, to the efforts of their priests; even from here he can feel the remnants of holy magic seemingly sticking to his tattoos. There are enchantments that could reproduce some of that effect, but Kael’thas wonders if maybe he could adapt those tattoos to other kinds of magic — it would require a great deal of tweaking to change the way they react, considering that Fel interact weirdly with other energies and the tattoos are undoubtedly made to compensate for that, but it could be done.

 

Illidan is fascinating. He’s a paradox wrapped in a mystery shaped like a magical work of art and perhaps this, more than his loyalty to his people, is what led him to where he is today. Kael’thas is a selfish creature by nature; for the blood elves, he was ready to be the Alliance’s dog for as long as it would take, ready to sacrifice what little there was left to sacrifice if it meant they would be safe. But when it comes to Illidan, he wants to have it all — his motives, his reasoning, the truth to all the contradicting stories. He wants to learn everything there is to learn about that particular mystery, and he doesn’t know how far he’ll go — if he’ll even be able to stop.

 

This scares and excites him in equal measure. Kael’thas is a mage before he’s anything else: he lives to go too far.

 

(He’s a prince only in name, a leader but not a ruler, and it is fortunate that he has thought to appoint Lor’themar regent before running toward the Alliance, hoping to receive their help in exchange for their support. Kael’thas can give them hope for a brighter future, but Lor’themar is the one who’ll keep them alive to ever see it.)

 

Finally satisfied by his observations, Kael’thas makes his way through the crowd to join Lady Vashj and the man she willingly calls her master. He nods to a few soldiers, sends a smile to Rommath — busy terrorizing the novices — and snatches a bread roll on his way, because he’s ravenous and would probably die of mortification if his stomach decided to growl in the middle of this discussion.

 

Vashj smiles when she notices him. A tilt of her head — a question about his health. He shrugs, bites in his bread roll then nods — he’s as fine as it ever gets in the Hellfire Peninsula, anyway. Illidan, arms crossed on his (very fine) chest, watches the silent exchange with a bemused face. It’s hard to read his expression when a third of it is hidden under a blindfold, but the way he quirks his eyebrow says more than he probably intends it to, especially with Kael’thas watching him closely from the corner of his eye.

 

She then turns back to Illidan.

 

“Nothing could have been possible if I had been alone in my enterprise, Master,” She says, continuing their discussion, and gestures to Kael’thas. “I have told you about Kael’thas before. The battle to free you from the Warden’s clutches would have been far more difficult without his help.”

 

Kael’thas bows his head, sending a sideways glance to Lady Vashj as he does. He’s surprised that she talked about him to her master, although he shouldn’t be; of course she would notify him of a possible new ally, one she put so much effort into befriending. He must admit, he’s flattered.

 

“It is an honor and a pleasure to meet you, Prince Kael'thas,” Illidan tells him, inclining his head in greeting and thanks both.

 

Kael’thas wants to laugh, or scream, or maybe faints a second time. He doesn’t have the opportunity to think this is all a fluke: his wrist suddenly __burns__ and the feeling, painful and surprising, steals the breath from his lungs.

 

He wants to ask Illidan how many years he spent thinking he was alone before Kael’thas’s came of age and words wrote themselves on his wrist; if Kael’thas could ever be enough to fill the emptiness left by millenniums of loneliness.

 

(He wonders if it’s not curiosity or loyalty that brought him here but fate, ever meddling.)

 

But what he ends up saying is, “I only wish we could have met in better circumstances”, and means: I have waited for you for so long and now, with only ashes and ruins to my name, I wish I still had a kingdom to lay at your feet.

 

By the look on Illidan’s face, it’s as if he already did.

 

Vashj must hear Kael’thas’s hollow voice, or maybe she catches the way Illidan’s shoulders tense at the words; she looks at them with slight confusion for a second before realization dawns on her. Then, eyes widening in understanding, she slithers off to give them space, waving away curious onlookers — Kael’thas will be grateful for it, once he can take off his eyes from Illidan.

 

They stay silent for a moment that stretches to infinity, frozen in the face of what they just heard. Illidan’s hand rests on his left wrist, claws digging under the bandages covering his forearms, but he doesn’t make a move toward barring his skin. With the way he stands, stiff as stone and half curled on himself, like he’s ready to pounce, Kael’thas would think he’s— unhappy to meet him.

 

Maybe Illidan Stormrage isn’t the kind of man who wished for a soulmate during the darkest hour of his life, not like Kael’thas did. Maybe he truly is so focused on his goal he never thought about it and, now that he has no choice on the matter, would rather not have met him. There’s no doubt a man like him — an harbinger of vengeance, Vashj called him, and he has to say it fits him — would see a soulmate as a weakness, a vulnerability.

 

Maybe he blames Kael’thas for being who he is — a descendant of the highbornes, an elf not even a tenth his age, a man, __not Tyrande_ _? Could it be disapointment that makes his face falls this way?

 

Too bad for him, but Kael’thas doesn’t care. He’s said it before: he is selfish by nature. __He__ has waited for his soulmate __his whole life__. The idea of this mysterious person waiting for him is what carried him through the darkest nights, and he’s not about to let __reality__ ruin that.

 

Straightening his spine in the hope of appearing taller in front of Illidan, who one could call a giant and still be understating the fact, Kael’thas opens the cuff of his sleeve in a few sharp movements and looks at his mark.

 

The black ink turned to gold, and the words shine like jewels when they catch the light of nearby torches. Apart from that, the soulmark is the same as ever; he looks back to Illidan and never breaks eye contact as he lets the tip of his fingers follow the familiar curves of the mark.

 

Still, he doesn’t move. He could have been carved from stone, if not for the faint shaking of his hands.

 

Finally, after what could be a second or an eternity, Illidan takes a step forward — slowly, as if a sudden movement could dissipate Kael’thas’s image like so much smoke — and takes the offered wrist in his hand. Long, wicked talons rest against his skin, above his pulse. Illidan looks down. The curtain of his hair hides his expression, but Kael’thas feels it when he reads the words: his grip tightens briefly before he lets go completely. He does not step back, as Kael’thas feared he would; he lifts his hands, still agonizingly slow, and this time he cradles his face.

 

His expression, when he finally lifts his head, is stricken.

 

“You—” This simple words is full of such wonder, so much melancholy and joy tangled together, that Kael’thas is thrown back to that first meeting, the pain he heard at the mention of Tyrande’s death. He smiles, as gentle as it will ever be, brittle like broken glass. “Elune, I have _missed_ you."

 

Relief floods Kael’thas. His knees buckle under him and he leans in Illidan’s hold, his heart fluttering in his chest. The part of him that said __who cares what he thinks, anyway__ disappears when it becomes evident he does care; he cares __a lot__ , actually, because this terrifying, __terrified__ man is his soulmate and Kael’thas is nothing if not a sentimental dumbass.

 

He finds that he agrees with Illidan. It's the first time they talk, only the second time they even see one another, and yet Kael'thas feels like he’s been waiting forever for this. He wraps his fingers around Illidan's wrists, the rough bandages rubbing against his palm, and doesn't say anything. There is nothing he could say now that would suffice to bridge the gap left by thousand of years of loneliness. He closes his eyes and wills his heartbeat to slow down.

 

Illidan rests his forehead against Kael'thas's, careful of his horns despite the fact that nothing like him is ever careful or soft, and maybe he closes his eyes too, he's not sure, but the Fel-fire stays as bright as ever. They don't fit together quite right yet — Illidan has to fold awkwardly to reach him, tall as he is, and there's hesitation in their movements, their restless hands that want to touch and don't dare to, the way Illidan keeps his wings tight against his back as if afraid of taking any more place. But they will; Kael'thas feels it in his bones, a constant, content hum, a warmth that spreads from his chest to the tip of his fingers.

 

(Everyone needs a place. It shouldn't be inside of someone else, but at their side? Kael'thas feels like this is where he belongs.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> come cry about kaellidan with me on [my tumblr](https://youngster-monster.tumblr.com/)!
> 
> “Everyone needs a place. It shouldn't be inside of someone else” is from Richard Siken's Detail of the Woods
> 
> This is the end of this story, but it's also now a serie, so stay tuned! There will be more, including: panic attacks, pain™, the entirety of the frozen throne but every time kael'thas is gay it goes faster, what the fuck ever happened in burning crusade or: the glorified secretary, the big sad, the boys are back in town, and a small child. Not necessarily in that order.
> 
> Why don't you leave a comment while you're waiting? :p

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [and the forest whispered our names](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13949298) by [rivkael](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rivkael/pseuds/rivkael)




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